The authors state climate models falsely assume water (71% of Earth's surface) is 100% efficient in emitting (and absorbing) far-infrared energy, but instead find "that is not the case," and that this discovery is allegedly a "previously unknown phenomenon."

Kirchhoff’s Law of Thermal Radiation dictates that emissivity is equal to absorptivity of a given material/liquid, and applies only to a true blackbody [which is a theoretical/laboratory construct that doesn't actually exist in the real world]. As this paper finds, the emissivity of far-IR by the oceans is only ~89% of the 100% "efficiency" of emission/absorption of a true blackbody. Thus, the oceans absorb only about ~89% of the far-IR from CO2 at 15 microns as shown by fig 3 below, and even less for longer greenhouse gas wavelengths in the far-IR. The remaining ~11% of far-IR emitted from CO2 is thus reflected rather than absorbed. [The authors define far-IR as 15-100 microns, and the peak absorption/emission of CO2 is at 15 microns in the far-IR.]

As I commented at WUWT, this allegedly "previously unknown phenomenon" should have been known due to the penetration depth in water of IR, which is only a few microns. That means IR from greenhouse gases can’t penetrate beyond the first 10 microns of the ocean skin surface, and all such energy is concentrated within the first few microns to cause evaporative cooling of the ocean skin surface. The ~89% or less of greenhouse gas far-infrared that is absorbed entirely within < 10 microns of the ocean skin surface is entirely used up in the phase change from liquid to gas and causes evaporative cooling, not warming, of the ocean skin surface.

IR from CO2 at 15 microns can only penetrate water < 10 microns

Evaporative cooling of the ocean skin surface top 10 microns at night [left graph] and during the day [right graph]. Note how solar wavelengths warm the upper thermoclines during the day, followed by cooling at night. Far-IR from greenhouse gases is ~11+% reflected by the surface and the remainder that penetrates can only penetrate up to 10 microns to cause evaporative cooling of the ocean surface.

Fig 3 from the new paper shows at the peak emission/absorption of CO2 of 15 microns [vertical black line], the far-IR surface emissivity of the oceans [blue line] is ~0.89, not 1.0 as assumed by climate models. Ironically, snow/ice [red line] and vegetation [green line] are much closer to true blackbodies than oceans [blue line] and deserts [black line]

On the other hand, solar wavelengths can penetrate up to 100m to heat the bulk of the oceans. This solar heat then gets converted to IR radiation emitted by the water molecules, which gets “trapped” by bumping into another water molecule each time the IR emission travels only a few microns in a body of water.

ocean warming can only be related to solar activity and modulators of sunshine at the surface like clouds, and not increased far-IR radiation from increased greenhouse gases.

This is a death knell for conventional climate models, which falsely assume the opposite of the four physical reasons above, thus falsely claiming IR from greenhouse gases can heat the oceans (70% of Earth's surface area) and where allegedly 90% of the "missing heat" has gone. This is impossible for the physical reasons noted above, and this new paper adds additional physical reasons why. As the authors find, the false emissivity/absorptivity assumptions of climate models results in a huge difference in model projections of Arctic temperatures by 2C after only 25 years, but the authors are apparently unaware of the reasons why only solar wavelengths can account for ocean warming/cooling, not IR from greenhouse gases.

In addition, as shown by measurements and a recent paper, the emissivity [which also equals absorption] of infrared radiation by water vapor in the atmosphere also declines with temperature, the opposite of a true blackbody for which the Kirchhoff, Planck, and Stefan-Boltzmann laws apply. Climate models assume the opposite that water acts as a true blackbody, yet another "basic physics" physical reason that blows the AGW theory out of the water.

The emissivity [which also equals absorption] of infrared radiation by water vapor declines with temperature, the opposite of a true blackbody for which the Kirchhoff, Planck, and Stefan-Boltzmann laws apply

This simulation, from the Community Earth System Model, shows decadally averaged radiative surface temperature changes during the 2030s after far-infrared surface emissivity properties are taken into account. The right color bar depicts temperature change in Kelvin. Courtesy: Berkeley Lab.

Lower emissions of infra-red from snow and ice than from desert and ocean mean that less heat is lost from polar regions than other parts of the globe and this previously unreported mechanism may contribute to Arctic warming, say researchers.

Scientists have identified a mechanism that could turn out to be a big contributor to warming in the Arctic region and melting sea ice.

The research was led by scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). They studied a long-wavelength region of the electromagnetic spectrum called far infrared. It’s invisible to our eyes but accounts for about half the energy emitted by the Earth’s surface. This process balances out incoming solar energy.

Despite its importance in the planet’s energy budget, it’s difficult to measure a surface’s effectiveness in emitting far-infrared energy. In addition, its influence on the planet’s climate is not well represented in climate models. The models assume that all surfaces are 100 percent efficient in emitting far-infrared energy.

That’s not the case.The scientists found that open oceans are much less efficient than sea ice when it comes to emitting in the far-infrared region of the spectrum. This means that the Arctic Ocean traps much of the energy in far-infrared radiation, a previously unknown phenomenon that is likely contributing to the warming of the polar climate.

Their research appears this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Far-infrared surface emissivity is an unexplored topic [for the "settled science"], but it deserves more attention. Our research found that non-frozen surfaces are poor emitters compared to frozen surfaces. And this discrepancy has a much bigger impact on the polar climate than today’s models indicate,” says Daniel Feldman, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division and lead author of the paper.

“Based on our findings, we recommend that more efforts be made to measure far-infrared surface emissivity. These measurements will help climate models better simulate the effects of this phenomenon on the Earth’s climate,” Feldman says.

He conducted the research with Bill Collins, who is head of the Earth Sciences Division’s Climate Sciences Department. Scientists from the University of Colorado, Boulder and the University of Michigan also contributed to the research.

The far-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum spans wavelengths that are between 15 and 100 microns (a micron is one-millionth of a meter). It’s a subset of infrared radiation, which spans wavelengths between 5 and 100 microns. In comparison, visible light, which is another form of electromagnetic radiation, has a much shorter wavelength of between 390 and 700 nanometers (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter).

Many of today’s spectrometers cannot detect far-infrared wavelengths, which explains the dearth of field measurements. Because of this, scientists have extrapolated the effects of far-infrared surface emissions based on what’s known at the wavelengths measured by today’s spectrometers.

Feldman and colleagues suspected this approach is overly simplistic, so they refined the numbers by reviewing published studies of far-infrared surface properties. They used this information to develop calculations that were run on a global atmosphere climate model called the Community Earth System Model, which is closely tied to the Department of Energy’s Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME).

The simulations revealed that far-infrared surface emissions have the biggest impact on the climates of arid high-latitude and high-altitude regions.

In the Arctic, the simulations found that open oceans hold more far-infrared energy than sea ice, resulting in warmer oceans, melting sea ice, and a 2-degree Celsius increase in the polar climate after only a 25-year run.

This could help explain why polar warming is most pronounced during the three-month winter when there is no sun. It also complements a process in which darker oceans absorb more solar energy than sea ice.

“The Earth continues to emit energy in the far infrared during the polar winter,” Feldman says. “And because ocean surfaces trap this energy, the system is warmer throughout the year as opposed to only when the sun is out.”

The simulations revealed a similar warming affect on the Tibetan plateau, where there was five percent less snowpack after a 25-year run. This means more non-frozen surface area to trap far-infrared energy, which further contributes to warming in the region.

“We found that in very arid areas, the extent to which the surface emits far-infrared energy really matters. It controls the thermal energy budget for the entire region, so we need to measure and model it better,” says Feldman

The research was supported by NASA and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

PNAS describes the significance of this research as: We find that many of the Earth's climate variables, including surface temperature, outgoing longwave radiation, cooling rates, and frozen surface extent, are sensitive to far-IR surface emissivity, a largely unconstrained, temporally and spatially heterogeneous scaling factor for the blackbody radiation from the surface at wavelengths between 15 μm and 100 μm. We also describe a previously unidentified mechanism that amplifies high-latitude and high-altitude warming in finding significantly lower values of far-IR emissivity for ocean and desert surfaces than for sea ice and snow. This leads to a decrease in surface emission at far-IR wavelengths, reduced cooling to space, and warmer radiative surface temperatures. Far-IR emissivity can be measured from spectrally resolved observations, but such measurements have not yet been made.

Presently, there are no global measurement constraints on the surface emissivity at wavelengths longer than 15 μm, even though this surface property in this far-IR region has a direct impact on the outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and infrared cooling rates where the column precipitable water vapor (PWV) is less than 1 mm. Such dry conditions are common for high-altitude and high-latitude locations, with the potential for modeled climate to be impacted by uncertain surface characteristics. This paper explores the sensitivity of instantaneous OLR and cooling rates to changes in far-IR surface emissivity and how this unconstrained property impacts climate model projections. At high latitudes and altitudes, a 0.05 change in emissivity due to mineralogy and snow grain size can cause a 1.8–2.0 W m−2 difference in the instantaneous clear-sky OLR. A variety of radiative transfer techniques have been used to model the far-IR spectral emissivities of surface types defined by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. Incorporating these far-IR surface emissivities into the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario of the Community Earth System Model leads to discernible changes in the spatial patterns of surface temperature, OLR, and frozen surface extent. The model results differ at high latitudes by as much as 2°K [or 2C], 10 W m−2, and 15%, respectively, after only 25 y of integration. Additionally, the calculated difference in far-IR emissivity between ocean and sea ice of between 0.1 and 0.2, suggests the potential for a far-IR positive feedback for polar climate change.

Far-infrared surface emissivity and climate by Daniel R. Feldman,William D. Collins, Robert Pincus, Xianglei Huang, and Xiuhong Chen published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1413640111.

Significance

We find that many of the Earth's climate variables, including surface temperature, outgoing longwave radiation, cooling rates, and frozen surface extent, are sensitive to far-IR surface emissivity, a largely unconstrained, temporally and spatially heterogeneous scaling factor for the blackbody radiation from the surface at wavelengths between 15 μm and 100 μm. We also describe a previously unidentified mechanism that amplifies high-latitude and high-altitude warming in finding significantly lower values of far-IR emissivity for ocean and desert surfaces than for sea ice and snow. This leads to a decrease in surface emission at far-IR wavelengths, reduced cooling to space, and warmer radiative surface temperatures. Far-IR emissivity can be measured from spectrally resolved observations, but such measurements have not yet been made.

Abstract

Presently, there are no global measurement constraints on the surface emissivity at wavelengths longer than 15 μm, even though this surface property in this far-IR region has a direct impact on the outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and infrared cooling rates where the column precipitable water vapor (PWV) is less than 1 mm. Such dry conditions are common for high-altitude and high-latitude locations, with the potential for modeled climate to be impacted by uncertain surface characteristics. This paper explores the sensitivity of instantaneous OLR and cooling rates to changes in far-IR surface emissivity and how this unconstrained property impacts climate model projections. At high latitudes and altitudes, a 0.05 change in emissivity due to mineralogy and snow grain size can cause a 1.8–2.0 W m−2 difference in the instantaneous clear-sky OLR. A variety of radiative transfer techniques have been used to model the far-IR spectral emissivities of surface types defined by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. Incorporating these far-IR surface emissivities into the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario of the Community Earth System Model leads to discernible changes in the spatial patterns of surface temperature, OLR, and frozen surface extent. The model results differ at high latitudes by as much as 2°K, 10 W m−2, and 15%, respectively, after only 25 y of integration. Additionally, the calculated difference in far-IR emissivity between ocean and sea ice of between 0.1 and 0.2, suggests the potential for a far-IR positive feedback for polar climate change.

Don't pay a lot of attention to the values of the parameters. They have all been updated since 1989 when the book was first published. Errors have been corrected: the Earth is not exactly a sphere; the use of geographic instead of geodesic coordinates makes a difference; the effect of the terminator is now accounted for; total solar irradiance and albedo have been refined; etc.

The total amount of energy emitted by the Sun and falling on the Earth (left) is equal to the total amount of energy re-emitted by the Earth (left).

Actually the AGW theory holds that the total amount of energy emitted by the Earth is not in equilibrium and that the Earth is warming at the rate of about 0.5 to 0.6 Wm-2 compared with about 340 Wm-2 incoming from the Sun. So the theory claims that the outgoing is less than the incoming by about 0.18% and that this should cause visible warming.

A chemist or physicist or geologist might suggest that such a small imbalance should not be expected to cause visible warming. The visible heat that is missing is so little that it could be stored, not as temperature change, but as potential energy in the form of heat sinks, such as latent heat of phase change in water (more water vapor) or stored in increased organic material (enhanced photosynthesis) or stored in inorganic material (endothermic reactions such as formation of carbonates resulting from increased foraminifera, etc).

Although the areas under the Goody and Yung curves may not be equal, they are almost the same. The horizontal position of each curve is set by the temperature of each body, the Sun around 6000 degree Kelvin and the Earth around 300 degrees Kelvin.

However, for each region of the Earth and each season, the horizontal position of the curve will shift left or right because of differences in temperature and differences in conformance to blackbody criteria. And the shape of the curve may change for specific Earth regions.

The reason for the change in shape of the curve is this: The figure in Goody and Yung is the average for the whole Earth based on idealization of the Earth as a blackbody whereas the Earth is a greybody with varying degrees of greyness. The shape of the curve for a region would depend on the degree of greyness.

This seems to me the key point of this new study: that the average value for the Earth may be incorrect. If so, Goody and Yung must be modified to conform to the "average of many curves" rather than based on a single curve derived average temperature of the Earth.

Peak radiation from the Earth is around 15 microns with a lower cutoff at 5 microns (mid-IR) and an upper cutoff at 100 microns. Thermal infrared is anything over about 3.5 microns.

Where I have a problem with this paper is that for each region they should compare incoming and outgoing. At first glance they seem to be saying that Earth is warming much faster than we thought because we overestimated radiation emitted from the open water of the Arctic Ocean.

I will read the paper carefully to see if they have actually looked at only one side of the equations (the outgoing). That would not do of course. What counts is the net energy flow. Best to remember that members of PNAS can publish more or less what they like.

Even if their conclusions about the sign of the net energy flow is not correct, they deserve congratulations on showing that Goody and Yung have oversimplified the theory behind the Earth's energy budget.

Konrad. November 3, 2014 at 1:40 pmThe more correct form: emissivity is equal to absorptivity for a given wavelength.

For the oceans SW absorption is higher than IR emissivity.

Johanus November 3, 2014 at 4:14 pmKonrad“… for a given wavelength”Good point, which resolves the conundrum being discussed.

Ferdinand Engelbeen November 3, 2014 at 10:43 pm

Konrad:

For the oceans SW absorption is higher than IR emissivity.

And for snow (and ice), SW absorption is much lower than IR emissivity…

Michael D November 3, 2014 at 1:14 pmThe Earth tends to absorb energy around the Visible wavelengths, and then emit energy in the infrared. Something can be a poor emitter in the IR and a good absorber in VNIR. The proverbial (and perhaps legendary) greenhouse effect is an example.

Konrad. November 3, 2014 at 3:11 pm

It will “click” when you realise that the atmosphere is a better IR emitter than the oceans ;-)

There is a greenhouse effect on earth, but it is in the oceans not atmosphere.

Oooh hello….After 30 years of doom-shrieking, climastrology finally works out that the oceans are not a “near blackbody” after all?

Well they haven’t identified a new driver behind Arctic warming. They have just collided with the reason that AGW is physically impossible. The oceans are not a near blackbody they are a SW selective surface.

There are two main factors behind this.

The first is that SW absorptivity for the oceans is higher than IR emissivity. However to get an accurate figure for IR emissivity, more field measurements are not what is required at all. IR measurement in the lab is what is required with background IR eliminated by an artificial 3K “sky”. (you may find it incredible, but this simple experiment has not been done, climastrologists just assumed.) Instead of the old 0.96 figure, IR emissivity for water should be down near 0.7 for the 5 to 100 micron range. This alone would mean the “surface without atmosphere” figure for a SW and IR opaque surface constantly illuminated with 240 w/m2 would be raised from 255K to 273K.

And the second SW selective surface factor? The oceans are not SW opaque, they are SW translucent. They are liquid and convect and illumination is not constant but intermittent. There a five simple physical rules for materials with these properties –

For SW translucent / IR opaque (material A) compared to SW opaque / IR opaque (material B) with both materials having equal IR emissivity and total watts for both constant or intermittent SW illumination being equal, the results of empirical experiment are clear –

1. If materials are solid, constant SW illumination will result in close surface temps for A & B with average temp of A higher than B

2. If materials are solid, intermittent SW illumination will result in surface temps for A higher than B, with average temp of A also higher than B.

3. If materials are liquid and convect, constant SW illumination will result in surface temps for A higher than B, with average temp of A higher than B.

4. If materials are liquid and convect, intermittent SW illumination will result in higher temperature differential (both surface and average) between A & B than condition 3.

5. If materials are liquid and convect, intermittently SW illuminated and deeper than condition 4, temperature differential between A & B will be greater again than condition 4.

The combination of these two factors means a conservative “surface without atmosphere” figure for the oceans should be 335K, but probably higher. Even if the figure for land is kept at 255K, that still results in a global figure of 312K. Current surface average is around 288K, which means the net effect of our radiativly cooled atmosphere on surface temps is….?

With regard to my comment at WUWT and the two SW selective surface factors -

The first can be checked by cancelling background IR with a cryo cooled “sky”. This is difficult to do without expensive lab equipment, as there are difficulties getting fast response liquid thermocouples and avoiding conductive coupling between “sky” and water surface. I have measured at 15 degrees of perpendicular with “sky” dropped to -40C - http://i61.tinypic.com/24ozslk.jpg- This causes a significant drop in apparent emissivity. To get a full hemispherical effective (not apparent) emissivity plot for water would require an expensive lab experiment with a liquid nitrogen cooled “sky”, multi band IR sensors and multiple sensing angles. This should have been done, but climastrologists made a lazy “blackbody” assumption instead.

The second factor involving SW translucency is far more significant in ocean deviation from blackbody. The five rules can be easily checked by others with these two simple experiments -http://oi61.tinypic.com/or5rv9.jpghttp://oi62.tinypic.com/zn7a4y.jpgI have built and run these. The temperature differential between Blocks A & B after 3 hours of solar exposure is dramatic at around 20C. The five rules apply if the materials are only radiativly cooled. They apply if the materials are radiativly and conductively cooled. They apply if the materials are radiativly, conductively and evaporatively cooled. Climastrologists provably ignored these rules when claiming 255K for surface without atmosphere.

That 255K assumption for “surface without atmosphere” is the very foundation of not just AGW but the radiative GHE hypothesis as well. My best estimate is that it is in error by around +80K. This effectively rules out a “warming but less than we thought” soft landing for the hoax.

MS,335K is not calculated, it is a conservative estimate from empirical experiment. After I had done the two selective surface experiments, I found that the work had already been done by researchers at Texas A&M in 1965 -Harris, W. B., Davison, R. R., and Hood, D. W. (1965) ‘Design and operating characteristics of an experimental solar water heater’ Solar Energy, 9(4), pp. 193-196.

They were working on a now abandoned technology, convecting evaporation constrained solar ponds.http://oi62.tinypic.com/1ekg8o.jpg (salt gradient type won). However this is what our oceans would become if they could be retained without an atmosphere. This type of solar pond suffered from overnight radiative cooling. The solutions were a) insulated night covers, b) pumped overnight storage into insulated tanks or c) make the ponds very deep. While simple experiment shows that surface Tmax for such a pond can reach 80C or beyond, http://i40.tinypic.com/27xhuzr.jpgover night surface temperatures are lower due to radiative cooling.

However, condition “C” exists for our oceans with solar radiation penetrating even up to 200m. For deeper ponds Tmin converges closer to Tmax. No one has ever built a wide evaporation constrained pond 200m deep. Hence I do not estimate 353K as the average temperature of oceans without atmospheric cooling or DWLWIR. Even with SW absorptivity higher than IR emissivity, I conservatively estimate a 80K increase on the 255K blackbody assumption.

If we want an exact figure for “ocean surface without atmosphere” there are two approaches -1. Build a 200m deep solar pond (using IR transparent LDPE film) in the Atacama desert at 6000m altitude where there is little atmospheric IR.2. CFD (computational fluid dynamics)

Option 1 would be the most spectacular (if somewhat expensive). According to the climastrologist calcs it should freeze solid. Instead the covers would explode, as the water would be driven far above the boiling temp of water at that altitude.

As I say, It's not just that SW absorptivity of the oceans is far higher than their IR emissivity, It is also that climastrologists forgot the five rules of SW translucent materials -http://i59.tinypic.com/10pdqur.jpg (graphical)That 255K “surface without atmosphere” figure is the foundation to all of AGW. And it's wrong. Spectacularly wrong. The oceans are not a “near blackbody” and climastrologists are not scientists.

Thanks for that, makes complete sense and explains why the "GHE" is in the oceans, not atmosphere, with IR heat "trapped" in the ocean, but more efficiently radiated to space by GHGs. The more GHGs, the more radiative surface area and the more cooling.

Yes true, but nonetheless, this paper demonstrates even in the topics the ocean is acting as a LWIR selective surface of only <=89% "efficiency," conversely near 100% blackbody "efficiency" for solar wavelengths. As Konrad points out, the GHE is in the oceans, not the atmosphere.

"The minority of greenhouse gas IR that is absorbed entirely within < 10 microns of the ocean skin surface is entirely used up in the phase change from liquid to gas and causes evaporative cooling, not warming, of the ocean skin surface."

Right, but since the energy is entirely used up, it does create more vapour, and water vapour is a again GHG. So the result is lukewarming of the Arctic region, right?

What is uncertain to me, is how the resulting precipitation (sp?) -- what goes up must come down -- come and where, in Greenland it could be more snow, but it could end up coming down as rain or mist. And how does the sea currents / winds relate to this, because only open sea can evaporate water vapour.

The authors state climate models falsely assume water (71% of Earth's surface) is 100% efficient in emitting (and absorbing) far-infrared energy, but instead find "that is not the case," and that this discovery is allegedly a "previously unknown phenomenon."

Who in their right mind would assume that anything is 100% efficient? That should have been the first clue that they don't have a clue.

True, and even the published literature [before this paper] indicated water emissivities of 0.96-0.984, not 1.0, but they were too lazy to distinguish relative emissivities of any surfaces. As fig 3 above shows, the emissivity of deserts, oceans, vegetation, snow/ice significantly varies and is <1.0 throughout, but the lazy modelers factored in none of this.

In fact it's worse than the article indicates. We should consider only the thin surface layer of the oceans (say 1m deep at the most) because that is what interacts with the troposphere. Solar radiation mostly passes right through this surface layer in non-polar regions. The majority of the absorption is spread over about 20m where, in the ocean thermocline the colder temperatures are not raised to that of the surface. Hence that new thermal energy follows isotherms and can only surface again in polar regions.

People can argue all they like about Earths without GHG or atmospheres, but empirical data (30 years of real world temperature data from three continents) has been used to prove with statistical significance that moist regions have lower daily maximum and minimum temperatures than drier regions at similar latitudes and altitudes. Water vapour cools because its radiation properties reduce the effect of the gravitationally-induced temperature gradient, thus lowering the thermal profile at the surface end.

It is ludicrous to think that people can be so gullible as to believe that water vapour jacks up the temperature at the surface end by about 30 degrees whilst at the same time we know it reduces the temperature gradient by nearly a third in magnitude. What on Earth would happen to radiative balance if both these really did occur simultaneously? Are you one of the gullible people, or do you think?

"The ~89% or less of greenhouse gas far-infrared that is absorbed entirely within < 10 microns of the ocean skin surface is entirely used up in the phase change from liquid to gas and causes evaporative cooling, not warming, of the ocean skin surface."

The electro-magnetic energy in radiation from the cooler atmosphere is not converted to thermal energy in the warmer surface skin of the oceans. Its photons resonate and identical photons are immediately emitted as part of the surface's quota of radiation as per its Planck function. That's why it doesn't penetrate beyond the first molecule a photon finds with which it can resonate. See my paper "Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics" for details.

Doug,I'm disappointed to see HS allow your posts here. I don't normally agree with censorship, but in your case...

You don’t understand radiative physics. Radiative physics is not at fault, climastrologists just miss- applied two shell maxwellian physics to a gas atmosphere. Then everything went south, so fast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KniKvVxaM1o (no, don't look if you are easily offended)

You fell for “PSI” Doug. And the false flag was being waved right under your nose. They were set up to combat.....me. (or any engineer like me).

You may be a sceptic, but you have done sceptics no service. Because you fell for a false flag operation, and promoted it.

I'm afraid radiative physics IS at fault if it in any way suggests that 'radiative insulation' makes a heated object warmer in absolute terms because of an increased total INPUT of energy to it (the addition of "back-radiated" energy).

I'm afraid radiative physics IS at fault if it in any way suggests that 'radiative insulation' makes a heated object warmer in absolute terms because of an increased total INPUT of energy to it (the addition of "back-radiated" energy).

A large part of this is that people keep using S-B math and black body math to deal with low pressure gases and that is flat out wrong. Low pressure gases are line absorbers/emitters and treating them like black bodies overstates their energy properties by several orders of magnitude. They should be dealt with via Gas Law as there is no radiative transfer of energy going on in our atmosphere anywhere below the stratosphere. Water droplets and suspended particulates may be able to emit some radiation but at 1 bar none of the gases in our atmosphere can. If they did, thermal cameras and the FLIR sights our military uses would not work. CO2 and CH4 cannot radiate at these low pressures as they never have the time to drop to ground state and emit before they bump into another molecule and transfer heat via convection. Since the energy level of a photon emitted from one of these gases is so small, the only place they have a chance of emitting radiative energy is Antarctica in the middle of the night in the dead of winter. (Still wouldn’t emit as convection still reigns supreme at 1 bar.)

The problem is that explaining this scientifically requires quite a bit of math and our wonderful public education system has fixed that little hitch for us… no one learns real math anymore so they believe anything they are told.

mkelly says:November 10, 2014 at 9:11 pm

Nielszoo I used to operate FLIR (forward looking infrared) in an S3 aircraft. The unit had a cooling unit for the mirrors down to -140 F or so. The heat IR signature is what we saw. Clouds were a disruption. Clouds were a disruption for radar too. The water looked black/cold but the wake of ships were easily seen.